Last thoughts on ‘Gone With the Wind’ Orpheum exit and more

Vivien Leigh's copy of the "Gone With the Wind" script is going up for auction alongside dozens of items from the late star's personal collection. Sotheby's is offering paintings, jewelry, clothes, books and more belonging to Leigh at a Sept. 26 auction. Leigh won an Academy Award for playing Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind." The sale includes Leigh's copy of the original novel, inscribed with a poem from author Margaret Mitchell.Also on offer is the wig Leigh wore to play Blanche DuBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Sotheby's U.K. chairman Harry Dalmeny said Tuesday that the collection offers a glimpse at the private Leigh, "a fine art collector, patron, even a book worm."
Wochit

Two Oscar-winners: Hattie McDaniel is "Mammy" and Vivien Leigh is "Scarlett" in "Gone with the Wind."(Photo: MGM)

The 9:01 is a daily column on all things Memphis.

Good morning in Memphis, where birds and bears have a date scheduled, but first …

Last (Written) Thoughts on “Gone”: When I riffed on Monday about John Beifuss’ story on the Orpheum theater’s decision to leave “Gone With the Wind” off its summer movies series calendar in 2018, I thought I was coming in late on a story that was losing steam. Alas, no. The national moment was pregnant in anticipation of just such a cultural wars football to toss around, and John’s story was twisted and inflated far and wide into something it wasn’t quite, including a USA Today story on this site that referred to the decision as a “ban.” It was not a ban.

Hopefully John has put a bow on this story with his thorough, indispensable column yesterday, which digs into the background behind the decision and offers context on other fronts. I’ve got a few hopefully final thoughts here, though John and I will touch on it later today in podcast form before moving on to other topics.

What is and isn’t a ban: Labeling this decision a “ban” or “censorship” suggests a lack of consideration of what those terms really mean. The Orpheum doesn’t show most movies, of course. They have programming decisions to make and deciding not to include a film on its calendar isn’t banning or censoring it. Every theater and museum everywhere makes these kinds of curatorial decisions all the time. Memphis knows from banning movies. The city once had an actual “Board of Censors” whose chairman, Lloyd T. Binford, would decide for the whole city what could or couldn't be screened here. He banned movies. The Orpheum just decided not to show one next summer. Reasonable people can certainly argue in favor of “Gone With the Wind” being screened, but I don’t think you can argue that a theater is obligated to show it or anything else. And the film is easy for anyone to see.

The shrinking “classic” catalogue: The Orpheum’s “Summer Movie Series” used to be called a “classic” movie series, but the word “classic” got dropped somewhere along the way. It removes the expectation that the moves will be old, the kind that apparently fewer and fewer patrons want to see. I understand this, but lament it. The Orpheum “classic” summer series was a formative experience for me as a high-schooler. The Wurlitzer organ, some old movie serials, and then a true “classic” film was pretty much my favorite Memphis cultural experience and helped feed my already growing interest in movie history.

The list of golden-age (1930s-1950s) titles that most people younger than me now fully recognize has grown very small: “Casablanca,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a couple of Hitchcocks (“Rear Window,” “Psycho,” maybe “North By Northwest”). And, yes, “Gone With the Wind.” The “classic” canon the Orpheum now draws from isn’t much larger, and attendance has shifted to the more modern. (“Grease,” “The Princess Bride” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” were the biggest draws this summer, as John reports.) The days of “Thin Man” movies as an Orpheum staple are long gone. So while I think the theater is ultimately right to shift “Gone With the Wind” off the schedule, I regret that it’s unlikely to be replaced with a commensurate classic film. I could list a legion of titles that I think would be worthy of a slot (“The Night of the Hunter,” “Red River,” “Meet Me in St. Louis,” “Bringing Up Baby”), but I couldn’t be confident any of them would outdraw the Orpheum’s weakest performer this summer. (A couple hundred for “Dirty Harry.”)

Here’s to a stand-up guy: One thought I’d had on this was whether the Orpheum played it the right way from a media strategy standpoint. As John notes, they could have waited until the temperature on these historical/cultural issues had (maybe) cooled and simply released a “Gone”-free 2018 movie schedule next spring, and not for the first time. But what John’s column makes clear is that while Brett Batterson, Orpheum president and CEO, may have “truly underestimated the reaction,” by his own admission, he chose transparency and decency over evasion. And isn’t that a refreshing decision?

I’ve only met Batterson once, before an Orpheum musical, and enjoyed his personalized introduction to a screening of “Purple Rain” last year. But I applaud him for how forthrightly he’s handled this, and for how the decision wasn’t just about public pressures but about a serious consideration of what kind of space the Orpheum should be (please note the “Little Mermaid” story to which John links) and what kind of public setting “Gone With the Wind” demands in 2017. Batterson isn’t saying the film shouldn’t be seen, but that maybe the Orpheum’s summer series is no longer the proper place.

So, That Was a Good Hire:

HUGE NEWS! @stubbyclapp is the Pacific Coast League Manager of the Year!

In the history of place-specific expressions on the human condition, this ain’t exactly the Gettysburg Address or the Seneca Falls Convention. As Statements go, it’s not exactly Port Huron either. But can’t we take a small measure of schadenfreude that Nashville got saddled with this? Can you imagine what our Middle Tennessee neighbors would be saying if this were the Memphis Statement?

Speaking of such, local social media of course responded by wondering what exactly “The Memphis Statement” would be. I nominate the words of Chuck Berry, from his locally recorded “Back to Memphis”:

"You can walk down Beale Street, honey, wearing your pajamas

You know home folks here, we let do just what you want to"

Quick-and-Pop: The Grizzlies introduced its three veteran free agent signings -- Ben McLemore, Tyreke Evans and Mario Chalmers -- at a press conference at FedExForum yesterday. I couldn’t make it, but Geoff Calkins was there and picks out some highlights. My two biggest takeaways: One, that Chalmers seems even more likely to make the regular-season roster than first thought, but which suggests one of the team’s sophomore guards (Wade Baldwin or Andrew Harrison) might need to be moved (off the roster if not to another team) to make room. Two, is that the decisions to not bring back Zach Randolph and Tony Allen were probably proactive and strategic, not just a result of how free agency played out. David Fizdale stressed multiple perimeter playmakers (not Tony Allen) and defending quickness (not Zach Randolph) as team priorities.